talk with me about sourdough, please

[cellio]

A pusher friend gave me some sourdough starter and I have been trying to learn to turn it into bread. In my most recent attempt I used this recipe, described as for beginners. I used the "bowl over the loaf in the oven" method, having tried the "pan of water" method with a previous loaf (but a different recipe, so no proper isolation of variables).

All of my loaves so far have been somewhat vertically challenged, like this one:

This is also the darkest loaf I've gotten so far. The recipe says 55-60 minutes so I pulled it out at 60. (Yes, I removed the bowl after 30 minutes.)

Should my bread be rising more? It's not producing hockey pucks; while the outside is pretty firm ("crusty", I guess?), the inside has regular bread consistency. The bubbles are small, not large.

That recipe says to start with starter, oil, and water and wisk them together first before adding flour. (This is different from my friend's recipe.) I've only just realized that I don't know whether that should be recently-fed starter or discard. Do any of y'all who know about bread have opinions? This loaf was made with discard; I'm wondering if that's my problem.

(The sourdough Internet tosses around lots of technical terms, but it's not always clear when which apply.)

I wonder if bad things would happen if I baked in a loaf pan to encourage more verticality (which would work better for sandwiches). All the recipes I've seen end with shaping the dough and putting it on a sheet or in a dutch oven; sourdough seems to be sculpture, not shape-assisted. But I might try that next.

I do not plan to buy, and have to store, a dutch oven just for this. I like bread, but not that much.

Comments

[kayre]

You're going to get lots of comments so I'll keep mine to one I don't see often. It looks to me like your dough could be a little wet, which is easy to do. A tip I've run across only once is to roughly mix all your ingredients, there can still be streaks of dry flour and a little in the bowl-- and then wait 5 minutes before beginning to knead. This allows time for the flour to truly hydrate, avoiding the temptation to add a little more water, or not enough flour, as you go on. In this recipe you shared, I'd do this between "Add the flour and salt and mix together by hand" and "Form a ball of dough with your hand that cleans the bottom of the bowl." If your ball then is very sticky, you may need a little more flour.

There are lots of sites that get into exact balances of ingredients, and hydration percentages and such; remember that it's okay to just experiment. Enjoy! :)

[cellio]

Thanks! I tried that tonight. Tomorrow we'll see how it comes out.